Etienne HAAN

I'm a composer and conductor based in Berlin, and I've spent my career obsessing over one question: what makes music meaningful to the people who hear it?

I studied composition at the Conservatories of Strasbourg and Berlin, and I'm currently completing an Artist Diploma at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Jörg Widmann's class. I've worked with orchestras and ensembles across Europe, and my own music has been performed from Paris to Kyiv. But honestly, the most exciting conversations I have about music aren't always in concert halls — they're with curious people who want to understand what they're hearing.

That's exactly who I love teaching. You don't need to read sheet music or have any formal background. My lessons are built around your curiosity — a piece you love, a style you don't understand yet, a question you've always had. Whether that's "why does Beethoven feel so different from Bach?" or "how does a composer actually make creative decisions?", I find those conversations endlessly fascinating.

I teach in English and French, and I adapt entirely to what you want to explore.

Explore music on your own terms, guided by a working composer and conductor.

My approach is simple: I follow your curiosity.

Music is not one subject — it's a web of interconnected ones. As a working composer and conductor, I navigate acoustics, music history, psychology of listening, orchestration, electronics, and performance practice on a daily basis. That breadth means I can go wherever a conversation takes us, and connect dots that specialist teachers often can't.

But I never impose a curriculum. Before anything else, I want to know what you want from our lessons — a richer experience as a listener? A deeper understanding of how music is constructed? An introduction to contemporary sounds that feel unfamiliar? We start there, and build from it together.

My lessons tend to be conversational rather than lecture-based. I ask as many questions as I answer. And I find that the most surprising detours — from a Baroque rhythm into African polyrhythm, or from film music into spectral composition — are often the most rewarding ones.